Excerpta.

Kaikoura Star, Volume XIV, Issue 758, 24 July 1894, Page 2

Excerpta.

The Pleiades and the Sun.

An Interesting Comparison.

How brilliant a cluster the Pleiades really is may be gathered from the fact that their light travels for 250 years, at the rate of 186,000 miles a second before it reaches us, and therefore the concentrated light of the Pleiades at the distance of one mile would be 2j quintillion (225 followed by 28 ciphers) times as intense as it appears to us. If our sun were moved to the Pleiades it would hardly be visible in an opera glass, with which nearly 100 stars can be seen in the cluster. 60 or 70 Pleiades surpass our sun in brilliancy, Alcyone being 1,000 times more brilliant, Electra nearly 500 times, and Maia nearly 400.

If we seek to know of the dimensions not of the individual stars but of the cluster itself, we are met with difficulties, but on the assumption that it is approximately spherical in shape we can calculate its diameter to be over 40 billion miles, so that light would take seven years to pass from one extreme to the other. If we think of the dimensions of our solar system by themselves, or in relation to terrestrial matters, they appear stupendously enormous. Neptune, the most distant known member, has an orbit of over 5,000 million miles across ; a distance that a ray of light would travel in seven and a half hours ; but the solar system is to the Pleiades but as a Liliputian to a Brobdingnagian —is but as a microbe to a mountain, for a sphere the size of the solar system would, if it were spherical and its diameter that of the orbit of Neptune, be relatively so minute that it could be contained more than 400,000 million times in a sphere the size of the Pleiades; in other words, the limits of the Pleiades could contain 150 solar systems as many times over as there are miles between Neptune and the sun.— Longmans' Magazine.

How Marmalade is Made.

The making of marmalade is a pretty operation. The makers, says the St. James Gazette, describing a London establishment, import their own bitter oranges direct from Seville, and into their factory are brought enough oranges to build an edifice as big as St. Paul’s. Let us follow the course of an orange.

It ripened by the river banks, Where, mask and moonlight aiding, Don Blas and Juan play their pranks, Dark donnas serenading. It is unrolled from it.s paper capsule and carefully inspected to see that it is sound. It is then put in a box, which finds its way to another department, where the small black spot is removed. If perfectly clean it is dropped into one basket; if dirty, into another, which goes to a new department to be washed. It then comes under the care of a girl, whose sole occupation is to cut it in half and drop it in a basket, which is placed before a woman who sits in front of a little wooden cupboard, in which spins, at the rate of 1,500 revolutions a minute, a wooden rose. A large red arm, on which is tattooed I LOVE A. R., is put out, the half orange is placed against the rose, and in a second the pulp and juice have disappeared, and nothing but a clean cap of peel remains in the operator’s hand. This is put in a basket with hundreds of others. They are folded in fours, so as to resemble a half-blown indiarubber hall, and thrust into a hopper in another machine, where sharp circular knives spin round, and cut them into innumerable rings, which drop into a drawer beneath. While this is going on the pulp and juice have been put into another machine which throws off the pipe and pulp and sends the boiled juice into a large vat. The thin slit rings of peel are then steamboiled in tubs and added with sugar to

the syrup, which is wheeled off to the boiling room, and in some seven minutes a ton and a half of marmalade is being put by strong arms and big cans into thousands of pots, tumblers, jelly moulds teapots, custard glasses, butter dishes, and some 50 other fancy forms in which the middle-class housekeeper likes to be served. These are fitted into trays, which are piled on lorries and are sent by lift to the next floor, where they are finished—that is to say, have the little brandy-dipped heading put in the neck, the vegetable parchment cover tied round the top, and the labels stuck on. When all this has been done by several bands, any spare marmalade which has been spilled is washed off the jars and they are wrapped and sealed in covers, and and sent away across the bridge on trollies to be packed in the warehouse. It is rather interesting, though a little late, to note that so perfect is the system that at the very time a crateful of oranges is being unpacked the jars which will contain the marmalade they make are being sorted out, washed, dried, and despatched on trays and trollies through various departments, so as to meet the marmalade at a certain point as soon as it is boiled. This is the history of how an orange becomes a spoonful of marmalade.

The Most Brilliant Court

in Europe.

The Emperor of the French, Napoleon 111., is said to have inherited a taste for external pomp and ostentation fretn his uncle, Napoleon the First; and he and the Empress were mutually determined that their court should be renowned as the most brilliant in all Europe, the consequence being that their extravagance was almost unparalleled. It is even asserted that any lady was looked coldly upon and became subject to reproof if she dared to appear at court in the same dress a second time.

These and similar absurd regulations were the means of ruining hundreds of families. ‘ I felt myself lost,’ writes the Countess Tascher de la Pagerie, ‘ in the midst of this fashionable world. What luxury ! What toilettes 1’ She goes on to say that the whole thing had a demoralising effect upon society ; for even if the many scandals io which such extravagance gave rise were not all true, ‘ it was not the less certain that in many cases it was not the husbands who paid for the toilettes of their wives.’

The Empress Eugenie herself set the example, for she was always splendidly attired, and had the reputation of being one of the most extravagant women that ever lived; although Madame Carette, in her interesting ‘ Souvenirs,' declares that some of her mistress’s most splendid costumes were merely ‘political toilettes,’ ordered for the purpose of stimulating certain trades.

There was a continual round of amusement at the Tuileries; and nothing could be more dazzling or magnificent than the grand balls, which are said to have been eclipsed only by those given at the Winter Palace of St Petersburg. There were usually five or six of these in the course of the season, and they were simply a succession of fairy like scenes. ‘On every step of the grand winding staircase,’ writes Count de Maugny in his ‘ Souvenirs of the Second Empire,’ ‘ there stood a gorgeous six foot Imperial Guard in a polished steel cuirass, as motionless as a stone statue. And what a glorious scene this staircase presented, pouring out, as it were, a living cascade of light and sparkling raiments, orders glistening on male uniforms, and shoulders only half veiled by transparent gauze !’ It was the duty of the court chamberlain to receive and announce each guest. His bow alone was a study, for, according to Count de Maugny, it was ‘ artistically graduated according to the importance of the person for whom it was intended.’ ‘Three Empresses.’ By Caroline Gearey.